General

Three of the four clocks near the top of City Hall have looked more like sundials lately. The hands were removed weeks ago when city facilities officials finally decided to replace them instead of doing near-daily repairs. The clocks had been running slow by several minutes a day, said Mike Isermann, who as division manager […]
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The man they call “T-Paw” was in Houston a couple of days ago. You don’t know T-Paw? Neither did the two well-informed folks I asked before I attended a reception for him, even when I told them that T-Paw’s real name was Tim Pawlenty. The two-term Republican governor from Minnesota is likely to run for […]
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The old pol hasn’t made it onto “The Daily Show” yet — unlike the guv — although the state’s longest-serving lite guv is traipsing around Texas these days touting his new book and telling tales about how life in the political backrooms of Austin really works. I’m talking about Houston’s own Bill Hobby, of course, […]
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The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has sent out a press release congratulating Harris County on its choice of chief public defender — a few hours before he is officially hired. Alex Bunin, the federal public defender in Albany and an adjunct law professor there, is expected to be appointed to establish and run […]
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Garnet Coleman was at the White House yesterday to celebrate the 90-day anniversary of the passage of health care reform legislation. The state representative from District 147 was very proud, he told me, to be sitting on the front row in the East Room of the White House and to shake the president’s hand. (I […]
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South Texans might have recognized the oil-smeared woman who stood up at the start of BP chief executive Tony Hayward’s congressional mea culpa yesterday and shouted, “You ought to be charged with a crime!” The Code Pink protester — who also told Hayward he ought to be tarred and that he should go to hell […]
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State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, wants the University of Houston to take the ball and run with it — or, more likely, pass it – in an administrative version of a two-minute offense. Now that the Big 12 has survived its brush with death – albeit missing a couple of limbs – he wants the […]
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A Houston friend of mine who, like me, has lived in Austin, is going to turn up her nose at the news, but facts are facts: Austin’s #1. That’s the opinion of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine — not mine, I hasten to add — in its July issue. “Our number-one Best City for the Next […]
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